Aggregate Uncertainty in the Citizen-Candidate Model Yields Extremist Parties

We extend the 'citizen candidate' model of party formation to allow for aggregate uncertainty over the distribution of preferenecs in order to address free entry in some earlier research on electoral competition with aggregate uncertainty with a fixed number of parties. We discuss and characterize the equilibrium set in this framework and show that two-party equilibria have 'extremist' parties, i.e., the party winning under a left-wing (right-wing) distribution is to the left (right) of the median of that distribution.